14 DAY TRIAL // Scheduled to be released in the third quarter of this year, AMD's Bulldozer-based server chips will be slightly different then their desktop counterparts as they use modified sockets as well as a four-channel memory controller, according to a company representative.
In a recent interview with the Ashentech website, John Fruehe, director of Product Marketing for Server, Embedded and FireStream products at AMD, released new details regarding the company's future Bulldozer server processors, code named Interlagos and Valencia,
According to the AMD rep, upcoming AMD Opteron chips contain four HyperTrasport links and can be used in up to 4-way systems.
In addition, the processors will feature two 128bit memory controllers, effectively raising the number of available memory channels to four, from the previous two found in present-day Opteron designs.
I am not referring here to the Socket G34 platform, since the Magny-Cours Opteron 6100 series processors are effectively two CPUs in a single package.
The controllers will be able to work in ganged and unganged mode, the latter allowing simultaneous read/write of 4 memory channels.
These CPUs are native Bulldozer 8-core chips and are compatible with Socket C32 motherboards.
Moving on to Interlagos, the chips will come as 12-core and 16-core models, and are effectively two Valencia dies joined together in a single package, through a HyperTransport link.
Just as Valencia, Interlagos features a four channel memory controller (this time just two channels per die), and are compatible with Socket G34 systems.
Right now, this socket is used for the Magny-Cours Opteron 6100 server processor series.
Interlagos chips will support unbuffered ECC or non-ECC RAM in addition to the traditional registered ECC RAM.
Bulldozer is AMD's next generation high-performance computing architecture, which will be used in the company's upcoming desktop and server CPU lines, early AMD reports suggesting that an eight core Bulldozer CPU is about 50% faster than an Intel Core i7 processor.